


Apnea

by Unicoranglais



Category: Return of the Obra Dinn (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, Groundhog Day, Nightmares, Post-Canon, Undead
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-23
Updated: 2020-09-23
Packaged: 2021-03-08 00:35:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,617
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26616826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Unicoranglais/pseuds/Unicoranglais
Summary: The dreams of the dead are strange. Take Winston Smith, for instance.
Kudos: 11





	Apnea

**Author's Note:**

> This is doctored from a far longer fic that may not see the light of day, but I felt it had a right to exist here. All you need to know for now is that this is set well after everyone's deaths. They just happen to have woken again.
> 
> Context may be doctored in down the line. Perhaps not. I almost like it as it is here; nightmares don't make much sense, do they now?

Winston was only nine when his father took him to the docks to see the ships. His cheek still smarted from the cigarette burn, but he stayed quiet.

Now he was there again, nine again, lost amongst the men, watching some shadowy creature circle under the jetty.

Was that how it had happened? An accident? Or was it because he had stayed quiet? He looked up, but the men were too tall to see their faces properly. The dream shrouded them in fog, like the craggy mountain peaks in America.

The shadow, on the other hand, was very clear under the water. Enormous, too big to even be another boat. Winston turned away, pretended his head was shrouded in fog too.

“Good boy, Winston.”

He didn’t remember his father’s face, it’d been too many years, but that deep voice as his hand slipped away wasn’t something he’d ever forget, or stop dreaming about. It rumbled like thunder retreating, made his heart light for a minute. Now he could explore the boat before he went home, thought young Winston, like he always did in this dream, though older Winston knew money had changed hands and the anchor had already been weighed.

He scampered forwards, and it being a dream, took the topropes like it was nothing at all. Like Walker, maybe. He’d always wanted to fly over the ship on the ropes, and why not? It was his dream.

“Does he have ability?”

He was high in the sky in a moment, but the voices were as clear below as the first time Winston had heard them. The shadow swam below the boat. He closed his eyes, faced the sun.

“He won’t be much use”, said his father. Maybe he was speaking out of order, maybe the dream was making it up. “He’s got hearing problems. Gets it from his mother.”

His ears were ringing, suddenly. He couldn’t breathe. Winston fell from the ropes, hit the deck, lay on his back and stared up, only to find the rigging had gone all foggy, too. The fog coated them, made them slick, dripping wet, and suddenly they weren’t ropes, but live eels writhing up there.

No, live mermaids. His chest heaved, but he didn’t dare look away. The men were so much taller, but they didn’t look up; they didn’t know the danger. One of the mermaids beckoned him, slick spear in hand, and Winston felt the call in his very being.

“Already one of you,” his own voice said, though he didn’t mean to say it. Maybe it was just his voice, not his will. This was a dream, after all. “You’d better let me go.”

There was a gun lying next to him, he realized. The bosun’s hand-mortar. He could take it up, again. Use it, again. But the _call…_

Now the shadow slid over the boat, and again the crew did not notice it, though it blotted out the sun and took out the rigging, ripped into the mermaids like a knife through butter. They fell into the sea, their screams unnoticed by the sailors. They threw spears and spikes, too. Winston tried to shout a warning, but he couldn’t breathe, couldn’t say a word.

The spears made impact. Men exploded. Winston sat down on the deck, trying to reign in asthma with will alone, and the shadow came back round, but it was only the shadow of a roof this time. Nothing to be afraid of.

A new place grew around him, every nook and cranny a temptation in its own right. Tools gleamed in the low light, benches called him over – stronger than even the mermaids could. The room was huge, a playground of blades and wood that seemed to stretch forever. The warm light of candles flickered with the sway of the boat, the work beckoning him, and Winston couldn’t help but feel home, much more home than he ever had in America.

There was a little wooden carriage at his feet, with painted horses that looked so real, they might just start and run off if he was to reach for them. He remembered that well, his very first time in the carpenter’s shop, but as he sat there in awe and men spoke high above, the dust stuck in his throat and choked him down, until he lay next to the carriage and stared, reached, but he couldn’t have for breathing.

“What’s this, boy?”

Suddenly the old carpenter stood over Winston, though he could only see his boots and the axe hanging at his side. The shadow slunk about behind him, and Winston pointed that way, but he couldn’t speak, his lungs seizing until the big man stooped and picked him up, raising him above the dust cloud and letting him cough it out.

“Never been in a workshop before? Aren’t there any on the plantations?”

“No.”

“Now remember, boy. You keep to yourself, and they won’t do anything to you.”

“Yes.”

“He won’t be much use,” said his father, exactly as he had before. “He’s got hearing problems. Gets it from his mother.”

"It's no use!" 

O'Farrel screaming, spiked, but where was he? There was only a burst of static, and Winston’s throat seemed to close in on itself. The shadow was moving, and it was stirring up all the dust, swallowing up the pretty tools and the pretty carriage in dirt and darkness. It wasn’t the old carpenter who held him high on his shoulders, it was Gibbs. No, Marcus. He could call him Marcus, surely.

Had he ever called Marcus that?

Anyway, Gibbs was choking too as the dust rose up around them, killing himself to save Winston. Now, where’d he heard that one before? Everything was repeating, too familiar.

"I've got you, boss!"

“Don’t call me boss!” Winston heard himself shout, though he couldn’t have with all the dust. “Wrong colour!”

“I call you what I want, boss!” Gibbs was impossible, tossed an axe into the darkness, but it only came back, maybe bounced off something horrible out there, hit him in the shoulder. Or maybe not the shoulder, because he gurgled.

Winston had to kill the crab, to save Gibbs. But Gibbs- Marcus was already dead, and where was the crab?

The dust flew higher, like a dust devil. A devil, a daemon, a crab, but there was no crab, but there had to be. The shadow, maybe. The shadow was the crab, or, or he’d fill the position if he had to- was that the mermaids talking? No, it was his voice. Thinking… thoughts. His thoughts.

Wait, was _he_ the crab?

The shadow lunged from the front! A crab! Winston took up his mermaid-given spear and stared into his own face and the bosun's mortar, ready to kill again in the dust that swirled, that he inhaled, that he choked on- the spear went into his front. His back. Everywhere, and he was choking

* * *

He woke up, gasping for air.

And that was how it always went. He was nine, he went to see the ships, and then men and mermaids exploded, and there would be dust, he would fight himself, and he would wake up choking. It repeated, repeated, repeated, like there was something in that dream he'd left unfinished, some switch he hadn't yet flipped to make it go away. Probably had something to do with dying violently, Smith figured. Maybe if he was actually dead, like, properly dead and not haunting a boat, he'd not be having any kinds of nightmares, though he wasn't a doctor.

Resident Definitely-Not-A-Doctor Thomas Lanke had the nerve to look _thoughtful_ about it. No wonder he'd gotten himself knifed multiple times somewhere down the line. "Perhaps if you thought something different, it would help, sir. Like a mantra." 

Winston thought about this.

* * *

Winston was only nine when his father took him to the docks to see the ships. His cheek still smarted from the cigarette burn, but he stayed quiet.

Now he was there again, nine again, nine again, not nine again, nine again, not, nine, nine again… Nine. And a shadow, under the jetty-

* * *

Winston thought harder about this.

* * *

Winston was only nine when his father took him to the docks to see the ships. His cheek still smarted from the cigarette burn, but he stayed quiet.

Now he was nine again-

_No._

No, he wasn’t nine, but he was here again. Same ship, same mermaids hissing at him from the rigging, same call in his chest. But he wasn’t nine, he _wasn’t,_ Winston reminded himself even as he slipped and slid into nine-ness, and there were no men for them to spike this time. He could beat this devil, or crab, or whatever was choking him, all by himself. Alone. He'd already done it in life: now he would do it in death.

His dream, his rules.

“Again,” Winston whispered, and reached for the bosun’s hand mortar, only to find his father’s hand instead. No! The gun! He wasn’t nine. But nine year olds couldn’t use guns. “Again, and again. But I’m not nine again. I’m not. I'm alone.”

“Good boy, Winston.”

Something about those words, again, and again, and _again –_ he couldn’t take it another time. Not another time. He was holding the hand mortar and not his father’s hand. He was aiming. He… was nine?

“Already one of you,” his own voice sang out, but it wasn’t his, because that voice was only nine, and he wasn’t. He _wasn’t,_ and he would not be, and that bolstered his resolve.

“You’d better let me go," said the nine year old voice. Winston aimed into the rigging, and fired.

This time, the shadow that usually swooped down instead _came_ down with an almighty crash, along with the ropes and the mermaids, and the dust rose up around it. Winston’s chest seized, it had always seized when he was nine- it had used to do that, but he wasn’t nine anymore. _Confidence_ seized him now - the cloud swirled around him, but it could not choke him. It wouldn’t choke him. He wasn’t nine again.

Winston’s ears rang and rang, but he didn’t fall. The shadow twitched, its life ebbing away, but it still lived.

“I deal with my own nightmares,” he said, and though his voice was quiet, his aim was as steady as it had ever been. Even when he was nine. Memories surged of the master, of the guards in the plantation, and then the men on the boats. Every man had a gun, every man said he had his way to shoot. But it always started like this: You breathed in, you focused, and then you let out your breath and-

He fired again. The dust went up in a great fireball, set fire to the deck and the ocean and the mermaids and the shadow- and the shadow twitched, its life ebbing away, but it still lived, and _Winston pulled the trigger._

The dream ripped at the seams, the ringing turned to white noise. The dust rose, he wasn’t nine, it fell and settled around him, slowly reforming into a wood floor. It was finally _over,_ all these repeats of the one nightmare.

Winston breathed, finally, great lungfuls of air.

Of dust.

Then he couldn’t breathe the dust anymore. But he'd won, but he was being choked, so he hadn't won.

And _then_ the thing that wore his own face stepped out of the dust.

It was clutching the bosun’s hand mortar. 

“He won’t be much use,” said his father, and the wood floor formed the floor of the carpenter’s shop, covered in sawdust and nails. Winston took up his mermaid-given spear and stared into his own face, ready to kill again, but his lungs had other ideas.

“You didn’t kill me”, he rasped, went into a coughing fit, it was just like when he was nine, he was nine again and his chest hurt so terribly much. “I killed you first. I _killed_ you. You’re repeating, why are you-!”

“I thought you were a crab,” the doppelganger answered. “But you’re just nine.”

“I’m nine?” Winston asked, like he didn’t know he was only nine. Silly Winston! And the sand flowed into his lungs and started swallowing him from the inside out, and his cheek still smarted from the cigarette burn, but he stayed quiet.

Marcus lay on the deck, bleeding out next to him, turning to dust in the dust. Axe to the shoulder. No, a spear. Dust to the shoulder to the dust. Was that how it had happened? An accident? Or was it because he had stayed quiet?

There was only dust.

* * *

And he was nine again.

Again, again?

No, only again.

One again, two again, nine again. Not again.

He looked up, but the men were too tall to see their faces properly. The dream shrouded them in dust, like the dusty dusty dust in America. Dust everywhere, under his feet, on the rails of the ship, in the rigging. The eels were dust. The mermaids, too. The dust blew around, poor Marcus was flying away and he flapped it all up with his arms, made it worse. The dust soon caught in Winston’s throat, caught in a big ball.

Marcus was gone. In his place was… more dust. Winston couldn’t see, couldn’t breathe.

Didn’t want to look anyway.

“Good boy, Winston.”

He held his father’s hand, but he still couldn’t breathe. Nothing was working right. Nothing was _right._ Winston knelt, crawled in the dust, his sides heaving desperately, and he thought of the eels in the rigging, they couldn’t breathe either, but at least they were dust now. He wasn’t, he was nine and he couldn’t- he couldn’t- his chest seized, hard.

“Marcus! Or whoever you are!” he screamed, but there was no answer. "Save me!" Winston gasped for air, put his hands around his neck and tried to widen it somehow. If only he had... if only...

His body twitched, uncontrollably. _“Save me!”_

Nothing.

“Come back!” he shrieked again, rolling about, choking and dying and screaming all at once. “Come back to me, make it stop! I-I agree to your deal! I agree to it!” He sobbed, remembering that no deal had ever existed. He always had been a loner, and now, here he was: on his own. Alone.

“I'll go to hell with you!”

But there was only dust, tight in his lungs.

* * *

“Calm yourself. Now.”

A hand pressed on his chest, and Winston blinked away the beast, Marcus, the dust, the crab, the spear, the dust, the dust, the- just blinked it all back like it didn’t exist in the first place. Air in his lungs again. His breathing quickened, then worked out there was plenty of air to go around, and relaxed.

A small boy with a huge bosun’s hat and Winston's face and a sailor suit peered up into his own, and swore like a grown man, before reforming a few blinks later into aforementioned grown man, albeit with only one arm and about half his face off. “ _Verdammt!_ Thought I’d never wake you! You scream half of ship down!”

Winston breathed, carefully measuring each by way of the rattle in his own disfigured lungs, somehow and impossibly still working, before he decided to risk talking. "Another terror." Nothing compared to what they'd both seen, of course. Those mermaids were terror enough that Gibbs had started to scream in his sleep, never mind Winston. Then, to Klestil - "I'm fine. You can leave me be." 

"You're sure?"

"Of course," he smiled. "It was all just a dream. It'll be different next time."

Already, the dust was clouding like a nebula in his chest.

**Author's Note:**

> _just take me back, gotta take me back, just take me back, gotta take me back, just take me back, gotta take me back, just take me back, gotta take me back in time, just take me back (oh), gotta take me back in (time), just take me back (oh), gotta take me back-_


End file.
